Picture special: From Battle Proms to charity running, life can really be a blast

Quite a sea of faces here in our main picture by Damian Halliwell, giving a great feel of the scale of the event as more than 5,000 women warm up for the Race For Life at University Parks

There were many cracking pictures from Mark Hemsworth’s Blenheim Palace Battle Proms, above. Among the explosions and musket fire, I really like this little unguarded moment with the English Field Artillery company. A nice quiet moment and great choice of cropping.

Some sports pictures fly out of the page because of their amazing athletic prowess. Others appeal to me personally for more abstract reasons. For example, because they bear a striking resemblance to a horrendous display of ‘dad dancing’ I was unfortunate enough to witness in a kitchen at a middle-aged house party recently.
The ‘dancers’ were pictured above at Farnborough Town’s ground at the weekend as the home side entertained Oxford United in a pre-season friendly.

A vibrant moment. Dave Fleming captures the intensity between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth above as Creation Theatre rehearse their play at South Oxford Community Centre.

Everyone’s got to love an inquisitive cow – even if it means you’ve got to towel down your lens after the shoot. All credit to Mark Hemsworth for standing his ground and not moving until the shot was in the bag. Although the picture above is splendid, the news story was less so as it concerned the problem of bovine TB at Jersey Manor Farm in Bicester.

Apologies in advance to seven-time clay shooting world champion John Bidwell...but our photographer Jon Lewis must have had his ‘Elmer Fudd’ filter on for this CLA Game Fair preview picture.